3 days ago
‘A garden is a grand teacher': The Kamakura Gardener nurtures and soothes via YouTube
'Good day from Kamakura, Japan,' a warm, soothing voice says, welcoming you into a verdant world on screen.
The voice, honed by five decades in broadcast journalism, belongs to Robert Jefferson, a semiretired news writer and announcer at NHK. For the past seven years, though, he has been offering a different kind of reportage, crafting a distinctive persona as The Kamakura Gardener on YouTube.
With his canine co-host Haru beside him, Jefferson has produced, shot and edited several hundred videos for his channel. In weekly half-hour episodes, Jefferson centers his show on the mountainside garden that he shares with viewers around the world.
Japan has no shortage of beautiful gardens deserving of attention, but I assure you this one is unique, even powerful.
Arrive and hear the birdsong around the sun-dappled terrace. Notice the rows of vegetables, fruits and flowers set against a gentle sea of green hills. Admire the drops of morning dew poised on the edges and folds of emerald leaves.
Feel your nervous system, twisted ragged by the relentless news cycle, social media scroll and endless to-do lists, begin to uncoil.
This garden offers a glimpse of a gentler world and way of living — a place Jefferson had to create for himself before he could open the gate to the rest of us.
Cure for the news blues
Before he met American civil rights icons including Coretta Scott King and Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture) as a teenage radio journalist, before he joined the news service of the U.S. Air Force and took assignments around the world — including an initial stint in Japan in 1982 that would prove life-changing — Jefferson was just a sixth grader in Pennsylvania growing a string bean plant in any empty milk carton.
'Look at that,' he remembers thinking when it grew. 'A little teeny tiny bean placed in soil with some water could sprout into a plant. I'm still fascinated by it at 65.'
Jefferson has lived in Japan for more than 40 years and is a semiretired news writer and announcer at NHK. |
Alex Michael Dwyer
Plants have woven into his life and career ever since: bamboo from his apartment in Koto Ward; cactuses and palm trees he received when friends left Japan; a fern he was gifted by his first car dealer; a rubber plant that fit in his bicycle basket in Tokyo, and now crawls for meters along the beams of his living room.
'Next year will be 50 years in broadcasting,' Jefferson says, citing an array of major news events, from assassinations and wars to natural disasters, that have been burned into his memory. 'From the days of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to ... George Bush, Obama, Biden and now Trump, I've seen a lot, and it can take a lot out of you.'
Before, he coped with the gruesome business of newsmaking with stiff drinks and jazz. His social world used to be centered around Tokyo's jazz cafes. He frequented Eagle in Yotsuya, Swing in Shibuya and Dug in Shinjuku.
'I used to hang out at all of them,' he says, noting how many friends in his nightlife community had passed away. 'That's why I'm so glad I quit drinking when I did. Had I not, I probably would've suffered the fate of so many others with bad health and a destroyed mind.'
Now, even though he still works in a news industry that hasn't become any less stressful, gardening offers not only a way to cope, but a chance to commune with the natural world — and transcend.
'Grow, my lovelies'
You won't find Jefferson's garden in the guidebooks, but the comment section below each of his YouTube videos is a testament to the inspiration he instills in viewers from around the world, or just across town.
'Watching your channel is so relaxing,' reads a comment from a subscriber in Florida. 'It makes me feel as though I was right there with you in Kamakura.'
Jefferson began working on his Tokyo apartment's balcony garden in 2006 before moving to Kamakura the following year, but the impetus to share what he did online came during the COVID-19 pandemic as he became increasingly health-conscious and felt the desire to grow more of his own food.
Kamakura is often pictured as a getaway. A popular daytrip from Tokyo, the city's beaches, trails and connections to history draw visitors in equal measure. For those of us who call Kamakura home, we experience the town, first and foremost, as a close-knit community.
I discovered The Kamakura Gardener in December thanks to a neighbor who ran into Jefferson on a hike. I had become horticulturally curious after frequent gifts of fresh vegetables and jams from that same neighbor's garden. Embarrassed that I had made it nearly 40 years into life without ever growing a single plant, I didn't know where to start. The Kamakura Gardener provided guidance in the form of a weekly episode of must-see TV.
If watching a garden grow sounds too slow in a lightning-fast world, turn your attention to the gripping anecdotes hiding just below the soil: the antagonistic rodents and insects that visit the garden uninvited; the water and fertilizer ratio riddles Jefferson seeks to decipher; the unexpected appearance of hard-won delights like pineapple and avocado.
Episodes continue in the kitchen where he prepares meals and treats with his homegrown goods. Once Jefferson sets the gardening shears aside and dons the chef's apron, all bets are off. Have a napkin nearby because it's hard to get through an episode without drooling.
Don't worry about indulging too much. We'll hike it off with Haru, the French bulldog — running into old buddies and making new friends along the way — to a viewpoint of Mount Fuji behind the storied Kuzuharaoka Shrine. The Kamakura Gardener is more than a gardening, cooking or travel show; it is a balm for our present milieu.
After one episode, I was hooked. What plants will survive and fruit this year? What new sagas will unfold? Why put so much effort into things you can buy from the grocery store?
These questions float in my head when I visit The Kamakura Gardener's headquarters this spring. Jefferson gives me a tour of his home — some 50 plants grow indoors alone — before we step out to the sprawling garden terrace. Haru zooms around as we explore, and there's so much to take in: tiny white blossoms dangling off blueberry plants, bright yellow zucchini flowers and radish sprouts that have popped up in the lower garden.
Over a glass of homemade ginger ale and freshly baked strawberry cupcakes, I ask Jefferson what I should pick for my first foray into the gardening world.
'Eat what you grow,' Jefferson says, 'and grow what you eat.'
Haru, a French bulldog, is Jefferson's constant companion in his videos and in life. |
Alex Michael Dwyer
My curiosity accelerates. There's a delight in Jefferson's voice when he sees new growth, and you can feel his resolve when presented with a challenge. His passion and determination are contagious.
'Grow, my lovelies, grow,' he frequently says with a chuckle in his videos. His words are fully sincere. They are like prayers to himself, his plants — and all of his viewers. The nudge of encouragement we all need to reach toward what lights us up and to release what dims us.
'I don't listen to (jazz) anymore,' he reveals in a moment of reflection. 'I listen to the birds.'
It becomes clear then, with the natural soundtrack of spring in the background, surrounded by plants Jefferson has cared for with such dedication for so many years, what makes this garden so unique and powerful. It's a reciprocal relationship: The garden has grown him as much as he has grown it.
'There's a saying,' Jefferson explains. 'A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness. It teaches industry and thrift. Above all, it teaches entire trust.'
These words ring in my head when I pick out my first seeds. A week later tiny, tender cucumber leaves sprout up. I run into the house, celebrating the growth like a child.
I don't know what to do when the sprouts outgrow their tiny cup container. I can only trust that I'll figure it out. After all, there's a garden I know I can visit anytime, from anywhere, for guidance on how to grow.
